


Symbiosis

by Croik



Category: Drag-On Dragoon | Drakengard
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 14:15:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croik/pseuds/Croik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caim and Angelus try to understand each other a little better between missions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symbiosis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zebra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zebra/gifts).



> I know in the game you can't hear Caim talk, but I figure he has to communicate with Angelus using actual words, so for convenience sake I wrote their conversation as normal dialogue.

"So, Caim," the Red Dragon taunted as they took to the air. "How did it feel to wield your sword to help someone?"

Caim shifted his position slightly atop Angelus' neck but he did not respond. He did not have to; she felt the mixture of emotion from him almost more clearly than she could her own. He was frustrated, anxious, and angry, as he had been almost every moment since their union.

"You take no pleasure in it at all, do you?" she said. "Hmph! I am not surprised. But surely you enjoyed cutting down those miserable sub-humans, in the heart of their own coliseum no less?"

"I am glad the boy is safe," Caim replied through their shared minds, as was his only option. "Though we did not find his sister."

"Oh, are you?" Angelus' tail whipped as she banked hard to the left, steering them around a rocky outcropping. "How well you disguise it."

"I disguise nothing," Caim insisted. He leaned into her as they moved; it had taken him some time to grow accustomed to her, but now he matched her instinctively. "What would you have me do? Embrace the boy? Laugh and cheer at our success?" His knees tightened as they gained altitude. "I was not aware dragons were used to grand displays of exuberance."

"You would not have to show it for me to know," Angelus reminded him. "I feel what you feel. And what I feel is varying shades of bloodlust. I had no idea it came in so many distinctive flavors!"

Caim did not have enough voice left to growl, but he hissed through his teeth, as Angelus sometimes did herself. "How is it that you can feel what I feel and yet you understand nothing? So much for the unfathomable wisdom of dragons."

Angelus' eyes narrowed, and she was silent for a moment as she considered his words. Though normally such an affront would have been met with her anger--how dare a human question her--it disquieted her to think that there might have indeed been something she was missing. "Hmph. What is there to understand about humans? You are all the same."

"Is that so?" Caim too was full of contemplation, but she could not discern the source until he continued. "Then it must be easier for a human to catch a dragon's eye than you let on to me before."

Angelus sighed, this time understanding him very well. "I cannot tell you why that dragon chose your friend Inuart," she said. When her wings next flapped she felt more keenly the pull of the air against her yet-healing burn. "Before, I did not believe that anything could force a pact between beings, especially not a dragon, but it may be that these mysterious Watchers found a way. There's almost no accounting for it otherwise."

"Then if we defeat the Watchers, his pact may be broken?" Caim's fingers curled against the back of her neck. "He may be put right?"

"Perhaps. But is that what you desire of him?" She banked again to avoid an especially tall peak. "Traitorous as he is now, his strength is undeniable compared to the wailing babe he once was. Do you prefer him as weak?"

"It is not what I prefer," Caim replied quickly. "It is what he is."

Angelus chuckled darkly. "And this man you call friend? You wish him to weakness and berate him for it? I am sorry it was your voice taken by our pact; I would have liked to hear you say to him all the things I have heard from your heart."

"My heart..."

"You hate him for his cowardice, don't you?" Angelus continued with confidence. "I have felt it. 'A man such as him would have never been good enough for her anyway,' your heart whispered to mine. But now that he has strength you hate him even more. Humans have strange concepts of friendship."

Caim shook his head, but the truth of her words was as blatant on him as a stench. "It is he who berates me," he protested. "Because he does not understand any better than you do."

Again, the accusation. Angelus did not want to give him the satisfaction of asking outright, but she was not interested in arguing with him all the way back to the desert. "Very well," she said. "Tell me what it is I do not understand."

Caim did not answer immediately, and in those minutes of silence he seemed inordinately close to her. "You all scorn me for my bloodlust," he explained at long last. "Inuart, Leonard, the Hierarch--and even you, dragon, as you scour the earth with your fire! But it is the Empire that started this war and I rise to meet them as I must. Who will meet them, blood for blood, if not I? How can we repel them if not with force? All around I am begged for aid, and then despised when I deliver it with steel. But what other means do I have? I am a soldier, not a poet!"

"Ahh." Angelus' talons clicked against each other. "You think them hypocrites."

"I think _you_ the hypocrite!" he retorted, his anger rippling beneath her skin like the itch from her scars. "You ask me how it felt to wield my sword in defense of others, as if I have not been doing so all along! I am no mad beast--I hunt only those that wish my kingdom harm."

He sagged, frustration giving way again to bitterness. "You may all be right to call me monster. But if that is what I need be to save her, so be it. I will be that monster."

Angelus closed her eyes. His desperation reminded her of the one memory she had of him before their souls were joined, and for the first time she realized that may have been when she knew him best. He had come to her in fear, in pain, and in rage, and she had answered him. He had displayed to her strength she did not think humans capable of, a strength that she, in her moments before certain death, had envied.

That strength was slowly becoming hers. Every time he spurred them into battle, she tasted the echoes of his determination and wrath, perhaps even savoring it. She was more powerful now than she had been before--more powerful than she could have ever been without him--and would only grow the more he hastened her towards oblivion.

"If you become any more of a monster," she mused, "you will become a dragon yourself. What then will I become, I wonder?"

Caim shifted, but she did not give him a chance to reply. "Very well, Caim," she said. "Let us be monsters together, for your sister's sake. For the sake of the world." She flapped her wings harder, driving them more quickly towards their destination. "I will not patronize you again."

Caim pressed his palms flat against her neck, and for the first time in some days, she felt that he was satisfied.


End file.
